BeagleBone PRU Notes

The goal of this page is to record information that is pertinent to getting started with the BeagleBone's AM335x Programmable Real-time Unit (PRU).

BeagleBone Programmable Real-time Unit

This is also called the PRU Subsystem (PRUSS) or PRU and Industrial Controller Subsystem (PRU-ICSS). It is optimized to perform embedded tasks that require real-time constraints.

Most important is the purssdrv library to expose functions to the PRU. You can load this library by typing modprobe uio_pruss.

PRU capabilities

• The PRU has dual 32-bit RISC cores, shared data and instruction memories and an interrupt controller (INTC).
• 8KB data memory and 8KB instruction memory
• 12KB shared RAM
• A small, deterministic instruction set

There is no pipelining done on the processor and there are 29 (r1-r30) registers to use.

Data Sheet is located at http://www.ti.com/lit/pdf/spruh73

Software examples

BeagleBoard/TI has provided example C programs that utilize the PRU on github.

These include: PRU_memAccess_DDR_PRUsharedRAM, PRU_memAccessPRUDataRam, PRU_PRUtoPRUInterrupt, and a PRU assembler.

Instruction Set

Nearly all instructions (with exception of accessing memory external to PRU) are single-cycle execute (5 ns when running at 200 MHz)

Four instruction classes

• Arithmetic
• Logical
• Flow Control
• Register Load/Store

Instruction Syntax

• Mnemonic, followed by comma separated parameter list
• Parameters can be a register, label, immediate value, or constant table entry
• Example
  • SUB r3, r3, 10
  • Subtracts immediate value 10 (decimal) from the value in r3 and then places the result in r3